things that cannot be unseen: friday night in yaoundé

i taught a weeklong course in yaoundé as soon as friday noon hit, i could tell my students had the itch to just pack up and go drinking. i chatted with the 2 younger guys from the ministry of forests, asking them what one does on fridays in yaoundé. 

we drink! 

can i come along?

of course!

so i meet them a few hours later at some roadside half closed chicken rotisserie place near the university. you kinda just serve yourself from the big cooler. everyone drinks guiness in bottles, it's digusting. like some sort of rotten molasses beer or something. they do not know what guiness is. 

we're having a sortof intense bushmeat conversation and i'm getting devoured by a mosquito. one little fucker is just eating me alive, despite the tropical mega strength bug juice. as usual, no one else is prey just my sweet european blood. they don't believe there is a mosquito even after i show them the giant welts on my ankles. we decide to go somewhere else. 

to the standard central african night club recipe: music so loud it's distorted you can barely recognize it, fog, laser lights, giant bottles of beer and someone grilling chickens out front. having been to places like this before i know what the bathrooms are like. it's a bathROOM. i.e. one closet space with some urinals and busted up turlet, all together and jolly. i'm already regretting my second beer and scoping out where it could possibly be. out next to the dance floor is a door, 4 1/2 feet above the ground, that seems to have missed the staircase going up to it, a few more feet away. an african architect woopsie. the men kind of gymnastics their way up to the threshold whereas the women go up the stairs and make a leap of faith onto this little ledge to go in.

this guy oliver had already went and i asked him, are the women and men separate or is it a communal thing in there. and he's all don't worry, it's totally fine, the women's stall are separate. do you want me to go with you?

no it's ok, i can handle it. so i go up the stairs and everyone at our table is like, cheering me on, take the jump! and i make it and i push the door open and gaaaaaaahhhh! i was like in a detective tv show, the first person who opens the door to find the corpse of my husband or something, horrified eyes, covering my mouth with a hankerchief and turning away in tears. that was me, though it was infinitely worse. and it wasn't just the smell, it was this huge black penis almost in my face, something that belongs on a horse. yeah, separate bathrooms, there are stalls at the end but it's a parade of dongs and guys who are like, heeeeeyyy white girl! i need to get the hell out of here so i go back out the door, but there are all these people coming in the ledge is single file, so i shuffle along the ledge in the other direction, and i'm backed up against the wall, like a jumper on the 76th floor who needs to be talked down. olivier comes over and i'm screaming over the music "that is so not my definition of separate!" and he's like oh come on, and he carries me back to the door and shoves me back in there. i make my way to a piece of broken porcelain that can't even hold the liquid inside it, i pee and it all squirts out a crack on the side on my ankles. i would have been better in an alley. i come out and all my peeps from our table are there like, yaaaay! you made it! and we're having some sort of party in this disgusting place, where we celebrate midnight, which is now international women's day. yaaaaay.

after finally leave, it's a whole mess of taxis at this roundabout. and i'm such a white bitch because i really have to pee, and i want to get home like, now. and well, if you have enough money (3$) you can basically commandeer your own taxi, with the poor fools inside it. so i find one and i'm only half apologizing to the other passengers as i whip out my 2000 franc bill, which means my stop is first, and completely in the other direction and so they can either come along for the ride or try their luck elsewhere. sorry suckas. 

the maid

so the maid who comes during the day (i never see her, but my bed is perfectly made and all my shoes arranged when i come home it's the BEST), well she also just takes whatever is in the fridge and cooks it. we're kind of in this roommate situation, so, i do buy my own food and try to tuck into a corner of the fridge but pascaline doesn't know this so...my avocados get cut up and arranged into lavish salad plates (she washes lettuce with drinkable water. props), my oranges are juiced, and eggplants mixed with big hunks of meat and stuff. but, whatevs. they let me eat whatever, and absolutely delicious most of the time. so today she made this great chicken dish with cashews and my roommate asks, hey, where did you get these wonderful cashews and pascaline says, oh, in the tupperware in the cabinet. which is my tupperware, with my imported stuff from germany stuff like, beluga lentils and müsli and buckwheat. so when i get home my roommate apologizes, all, sorry we dug into your cashews and i'm like, cashews? i don't have any...oh wait. i had a bunch of individually wrapped tiny peanut mixes from trader joes (best africa emergency food)? which means pascaline opened each and every little bag, and dug out all the cashews. well that's pretty dedicated. thanks for the half bags of raisins, pascaline.  

trying to be nice

so i went to the supermarket, and being the wonderful person that i am, i pick up a coke for the guardian guy. i go to check out and the cashier is straight valley girl cameroon style. crazy hair extensions, super long nails, loudly chewing her gum. and she's all, did you bring back an empty bottle to exchange with this coke

and i'm all no, i didn't bring a bottle. i want to buy this one

"you have to bring back a bottle to get a new bottle."

but i don't have an empty bottle. this is my first bottle. ever.

so the bag boy jumps in, "where's your empty bottle? you have to bring an empty!"

i understand the recycling thing but at some point in time, someone should be able to buy a new bottle. the circle is not closed. 

"well, you want to pay the deposit?" says the cashier with a look like i'm insane with hundred dollah billz coming out of my ears.

how much is the deposit

"75 francs!!" (10 cents)

oh my god! 75 francs? whatamigonnadooooo and i hand her a 10,000 CFA bill

and i get this glare, "i don't have 25 franc coins, so here's a BISCUIT" along with...a receipt with a red pen signature, which i will present, with the empty bottle, in order to get my 75francs back. well, i'll tell you what, the guard's gonna think it's christmas!

Me arriving for my first day of work in our Yaoundé office

Colleague: How was your walk to work?

Me: very nice, i only live 3 minutes away, easy.

Colleague: yes, there is a little trash sometimes on that path but it’s ok. And well…i don’t want to scare you or anything but last week there was a cadavre on the side of that road

Me: oh? (mouth kindof agape)

Colleague: yes, but it’s nothing to worry about.

Me: ?

Colleague: Ok, so it wasn’t the first one we have found, it might have been the second, but really it’s nothing to worry about. It’s just a little…"desagreable" (unpleasant).

Me: ?

Colleague: no, really, it’s just when, you know, someone doesn’t pay their taxi fare or whatever, it turns into an argument, well, it can end up like that. you know how it is.

Me: thankfully i have no money for a taxi. Yaoundé doesn’t accept Maestro.

Colleague: yes, Yaoundé is a Visa town. Enjoy your stay! 

yo, yaoundé

fiirst time in cameroun! yaoundé to be exact. hilly, low-rise kinda city of average central african shithole-iness. haven't found a bank machine that will accept my cards yet, but did find a lovely basket maker to take what few central african francs i had left from my last trip to gabon. 

 

a very slanty basket workshop

there are questionable establishments like the libyan gas station, which looks just plain old shady and reminds me of the frantic scene from Back to the Future with Christopher Lloyd screaming "the libyans are coming!" there is a "twitter hotel" which seems neither to have any electricity, and to be pretty much a cement shack and of therefore dubious access to twitter or social media. yes, jules, i'll take a picture of the "coiffure en 3D" sign. i think everyone wants their haircut in 3D, am i right?

the number of burning trash piles per hectare, slightly less than kinshasa. it's comfortably warm, as opposed to butt-sweating river hot. at night there are pleasant downpours to cool everything down. i am renting a room in a wonderful flowery villa of a friend of a friend which is a 2 minute walk to the office. hot water, cats, a dog, a maid who cooks, hibiscus as far as the eye can see in a delightful patio where i was served brunch with homemade guacamole, gazebo with loungy basket chairs and internet sometimes. for the absurd price of 15$ a night. should be totally airbnb verified. 

the chillout gazebo

my new breakfast friend

my host took me to a crafts market (yes we're best of friends already) where there were endless stands of people and their goods. 

often, a man sitting in what literally could be construed as a throne, ornate with feathers and nuts and shells waving ceremoniously over his wares. pointing informatively to something: "that is a plate, this is a bowl, that is a hippopotamus." my favorite stands were the ones with the fat sleeping ladies, i would step over them gently to inspect their baskets and only wake them when i wanted to buy something. which was so cheap you almost wanted to offer more. the guys with their bronze statues were really pushy, but i think i came away with a good deal on a bell. "to command my future husband." and then the crazy furniture. a huge imposing mahogany bed with a flourishing headboard featuring a lion taming his lionness around a giant mirror, to see what you are doing, i guess. must be for the lebanese crowd. who were also gawking over the gold and faux tiger print dining room sets. and of course, the never absent phallic art. i asked one man, so, what is this animal? holding up a giant 2 foot long gold (circumcized) cock n balls. he blushes, saying...madame, that...that... is a zizi. 

my charm is enough to grease the wheels of corruption

my last day in kinshasa certainly wasn’t the best.
the night before i was awoken very late by the my project surveyor, steve, who has been stuck in brazzaville with the plane for the past few days. It goes like this. The plane we were supposed to use for our project crashed in malawi (steve was on board and survived and told me the whole crazy story), so the backup plane was doing a job in congo brazzaville and was going to pop over when it was done. Just needed 2 days. Easy peasy. Right in time for our press trip. Well as it turns out brazzaville doesn’t have the right kind of fuel, and so the plane was popping over to kinshasa to refuel – stopping at n’jili international airport and going through customs (2 hours), paying fees and then hopping, literally 5km away to N’Dolo domestic airport, paying more fees and refuelling, dealing with the crummy authorities there (3 hours). So one day they happened to be delayed until night and they couldn’t fly through the fog so got stuck in Kinshasa and the pilot never got a stamp in his passport (had a visa, just no stamp!) and this meant another 2 day delay being stuck at immigration, poor guy wearing the same overalls and underwear the whole time. 
So steve calls me and says they don’t have the right permit to land and that they won’t get it for another week and i need to pull some strings. I can pull strings! I look into the stack of business cards from the previous week and woohoo - There is patrick, assistant to the important someone who will sign our permit! At our meeting he held my hand a little too long when he told me he would do whatever it would take to help our project but anyway. I call him first thing, 7 am. He says he’ll call so-and-so and get me a meeting with another so-and-so in 2 hours. I call omba, my slowest driving chauffeur/go-to civil aviation ministry guy. We plan a strategy and we’re there.
Before you go to any of these ministries though, you better arm yourself with hard and soft copies of whatever it is you already sent them. In this case, a signed letter of support from the former president of DRC (yes, our project has been delayed since 2011) and all the stuff that accompanies the permit application. We’re kind of in a hurry, got stuck in a big traffic jam on the way to the office. i quickly send everything to the printer and when i go to pick it up there’s a crowd standing around like someone just got into a bike accident. I push in, Let me through! As if I am a paramedic. But i am, I am the emergency personnel because my office mates cannot ever seem to comprehend the printer.  They’ll open and close the compartments, and lift and press buttons when the screen clearly says „insert paper in tray 2.“ And then all the print jobs they each sent a million times because they weren’t coming out pile up and delay everything. My letter comes out sideways. Someone messed with the manual tray. Gah! I send again. Low toner. The letter is barely visible, the map doesn’t look so hot but f it, this is DRC, come on.

So we go the Civil Aviation’s second office in my best congo dress– i have been to the fancy one on the boulevard, this is a whole other story. We are on the same crazy street i bought my fabric. Blaring music, handicapped children, madness. People selling sneakers, and locks and police everywhere. I climb out of the truck and instantly someone is showing a plastic bucket in my face, 1$! I feel like i’m part of an undercover drug deal movie where someone is following me in their sniper viewfinder. Shday dealings here. We meet some guy on a crowded sidewalk and shake hands, he leads us into a dank alley where people are reparing motorbikes and cars. I have to step over oil cans and pumps and machines. We go up a back stairway and see a paper stuck to a door that says civil aviation. Inside is a maze of chairs and tables and offices in closets. The fact that it is indeed the civil aviation office is proven by heaps and heaps of dusty old binders with titles like Air France/1989-91. Documents everywhere. They are piled on the stairs, against doors, and even a huge mess on the balcony. A man sleeps on a desk, he has a very fancy suit, but neither shoes or socks. There are 2 computers, maybe, for the 11 people crammed in one office.  Every so often I want to take a picture but i recall how much edouard had to pay in fines so i slink back. They instruct me to sit on some antique chair which is totally broken, i sink through it and spend the next 10 minutes picking out splinters from my dress. A gust of wind comes and blows documents around- receipts, xerox copies, the kind that printed in purple. Some of the documents swirl out the window and land like falling leaves in the chaotic street below. 

They finally invite us in to an office which is about, 2.5 feet by 14 feet. It’s more like a corridor, with a big closet at the end. Everyone sits side by side, but all look to the guy at the desk all the way at the left. I explain in my utmost polite french our situation, the plane wants to come here, we just want to move things along. I hand over the letter. The director guy reads it, beginning to end, at the pace of about 1

word

per

second.

Then he reads it again. Even slower.
This letter is from the time of the other Kabila! Yes, i know…he is super nice. He says he’ll give us a permit for whatever we want. But this letter, it seems to lack toner and is it printed sideways? Please go to a cyber cafe and make me a better copy. He did just read it in his entirety, but the hue of the text is now not to his liking. This letter is also in the dossier that is sitting open on his desk but i won’t argue. So we go to an internet cafe, which is a whole other fiasco. I need to get into my email and get the files. They ask me if i want to use aol or yahoo? Really? Aol?

Neither, i need the internet. I want to print.

You want to game or chat?

The computers are from the 80s and there are far too many plastic chairs to fit in this room, people keep bumping into them.

Uhhhh. I am starving. This place is owned by lebanese, there are tons of cats lounging on windowsills, and they serve schwarma. Not so bad. We finally manage print our stuff and go back to hand over the docs. Omba says i can wait in the car, he will run in. He comes back, with the dude from the street, who gets in the car, sits right next to me and wants to ask me something. I have my phone in my hand, my mind is back in the sniper movie…i should record the conversation i am about to have…but i can’t seem to do it not obviously, he’s already talking to me. Omba and his driver trainee or whomever it is, tune out. this is my business. The guy says that to bring our file to the next office, you need to pay for transport and i say, no need for transport, we will take you now, buckle up! And he’s all no, not just that, you have to pay a fee, for the delivery and i say, no problem! I’ll pay any fee as long as i have a receipt! And so he’s all nooo, no receipts madame and everything is in slow motion, i have papi’s voice floating in head „smallll biiillls!“ there’s a man knocking eagerly on my window, he has 50 brooms and wants to sell me one. What do you want me to do with a broom?? How on earth does one man carry that many brooms? My mind flashes to my wallet, which i recall i emptied to pay for the internet cafe and only has a 100$ bill left in it..yeah, i’m certain this guy will give me change …woah hold on, wait a minute, i’m being asked for a bribe! Cool!

But wait, guy, i’m broke, without a receipt i pay out of my own pocket and sorry but times are tight. I need to pay my rent, my 50$ go pass, and the hotel bill of my mindless colleague who skipped out on us! So, no can do, really. So why don’t you do what you usually do and take a bus and call me when you get there. he grumpily leaves the car, and omba drops his head into his hands, shaking his head.

What, i was supposed to pay the guy? Really? How do i know he’s not going to just pocket it? We kinda have a policy against this stuff, ya know.

Aurelgrooves, you are so congolese, but you are not entirely congolese.

So we drive off. Omba is quiet. i’m trying to justify my morality but he just turns up the music. He is very disappointed, all this work for nothing.

I get back to the office and poll my colleagues. My assistant elvis (whom i’ve recently bummed money off of) is all, man, you gotta play by the rules! Cyril uses the analogy, „well I hope you left a door open, you have to stick your foot in before it closes.“ My logistician Serge comes in, almost angry, why didn’t you call me?? I tell him the predicament, that our permit might not arrive at all now, and he shares omba’s disappointment. When will you learn, aurelgrooves? He looks at his watch, he makes a call, he has a plan. I am now ranting about my principles, my finances, the fact that this country is so fucked up, yet it actually has a mandatory insurance rules for employers! Government shuts down every day but they have affordable health care! I gotta pay my go-pass! Serge asks me what i think i should pay. As a moral employee of my orgnization, i did not answer „ok, less than 50$ but maybe more than 25$,“ i did not hand him cash and he did not provide me with a mystery receipt 4 hours later….and i did not receive a call later from patrick saying „we have expedited your dossier, it is now with the security authorities and will be approved first thing tomorrow morning!“     

when i reach my bed, i am deflated. in the end, Congo prevails, nothing will change it. the next morning Serge comes to pick me up, and he asks me how the dossier is going. i thank him for his wizardry and tell him as expected our application is all in order will be ready later that morning, by the time i am boarding my flight to nairobi. but he says, "i still have your money, i was about to drop it off with the guy now!" no way! you mean i did this on my own! with my congolese charm! still got it! 

ya rezo?

So we’ve been here at the headquarters of this cattle ranching company for 3 days. The welcome has been wonderful, we have 2 well equipped houses (one of which is the CEO’s second residence) for  our10 people, rainfed water system for refreshing bucket bathing, a little man who makes coffee in the morning and serves breakfast and cleans up, at night we eat dinner with the operations manager , monsieur Ntondo in his home. We eat beef. Lots of beef. Grilled, roasted tenderloin, liver, you name it. Mr. Ntondo seems tob e vegetarian. He says meat is bad for your health. He doesn’t mind serving us lots of beer, which he also doesn’t touch. There’s a generator that provides enough electricity to charge up our phones and computers, we really couldn’t have asked for more. When we are not on a trip visiting villages or pastures, we sit around our plastic table on the veranda, the germans chain smoking and trying to crack the problem of how to figure out a feasible emissions reduction project. We play a little frisbee and make fun oft he complaining journalist, talk politics with the congolese and receive our share of visitors. The DGM guys who ask for our passports, the Public Relations guy who seems to like the Yankees. It’s a very nice ambiance and could almost be like vacation if i wasn’t ask to pull up imagery or a map every 20 minutes, and if lunch didn’t consist of stale bread and sardines.

When i have some downtime, i’ll take a walk through the worker village to find the „reseau“ the one square meter where you get vodacom reception. The first night i found it by walking towards the little glitter of lights that resembles fireflies – as i got closer i could discern the little nokia screens lighting up the faces of their owners. As i got closer i met a man who goes by the name rambo, who lit the way through the field his phone flashlight (the nokia really has anything you can need). On this little mound in front of a hut, seems to be some church or something. we all gathered around, phones reaching fort he sky, shouting eagerly like at bingo – i have 2 bars! And then we all huddle closer, then one person breaks away, and the crowd follows him and so on. I was able to download a few messages, and send some more, trying to get an update on my lidar plane! After i started getting devoured by mosquitos, i headed home.

The next day was Sunday. We had a lazy morning around the house and mina and i decided to take a walk and go check our voicemail. We went through the market, some houses, saw some lazy dogs and acquired the usual 50-75 kid following. We get to the little spot and it’s a rather crowded. Kids, mamans, it’s a bit chaotic and hard to hear your messages and write down numbers when kids are tugging your hands and hair and pants. The phone is cutting in an out, you have tob e really careful not to move an inch when on a call. I’m desperately trying to understand what my LiDAR plane pilot is saying in 1 second intervals between 4 seconds of silence. This is really challenging. When i finally find a moment of streaming conversation, 4 kids turn the corner with drums and flutes. These are the kimbangiste congregation, mass is starting! 

The drums and music drown out my phone, what did you say? Can you repeat? Gahhhh, this is not going to work. i give up. The kids all cheer when i hang up, dance! Dance! Pictures! And so begins the conga line, the jumping, the cheering, the hair pulling and hand shaking, total excitement because mondeles never dance, i guess. The angry pastor comes out oft he church and demands everyone come in. Oooh le big boss, smirks one little boy. The adults are getting angry, we are distracting everyone, we really should go. NO! Les copines restent! The little girls demand! They are grabbing our hands and clothes, trying to get us to join them for mass, which for these guys lasts aaaalllll day. Non non we have to work! The pastor bangs a bell hanging from a tree, which is an old truck tire hanging from a branch by ropes. Don’t leave!  For a second i consider it – well, if there is good reception inside, i could sit in the back and surf facebook or chat with my friends? Non non, désolée les amis…i really should go. I’m in a fin fond of Congo, i’m going offline, i don’t need to checking my email!

beef. it's what's for dinner

So today we think we found it. The real cause of the problem, and this unsustainable lifestyle, that is, actually, at the moment not yet a problem. DRC is huge, space is not an issue, people cut down the forest like it is limitless, and in a way it is. But not for long.

Monsieur Ntondo took us around in his land rover, showing us some of the camps that houes the workers, some more pastures, and remaining gallery forests that you can see have been visibly reduced. It’s a sad landscape, chopped and burned trees, ovens to make charcoal and a few lonely huuuuuge trees that remain – they are probably too big to be cut down. We go to another village, ikoki. The chief and his deputy is away. This is kind of a good thing, perhaps we can really talk to the people – we want information on how much crops they grow, how much area they use, how they earn their livelihoods.
We thus have a meeting with the chief’s 3 sons. One of them calls the chief and asks for his permission to talk to us, we are given the ok. Same drill as the day before, i try and speak for our group while someone translates into lingala. An odd moment is when the village brings their own translator, they don’t want monsieur ntondo to twist our words. But everyone speaks french so they don’t really need a translator but anyway. We introduce ourselves, tell them why we are here and just jump into the questions. How many houses are here? How big is the average household? That sort oft hing. And the chief guys well they seem clueless, royalty. they just shrug and it’s mostly these younger teenager guys who answer. 53 houses! Everyone has 7-10 kids and 10 chickens! When you ask them to count average things, like how many sacks of manioc they sell downstream a year it gets a little complicated, but joachim, one of our german consultants is chain smoking, making calculations, vewy interested. They tell us how every year they burn all the savanna (one of the problems we are trying to solve is that the villagers make these huge savanna fires in the dry season,  and that spills over into monsieur ntondo’s cow pastures). So we ask them, Why do you burn the savanna?

To make it easier for the women to walk through it.

They generally seem to like our questions, like we are on a little game show. It becomes obvious that these people are pretty well off. Relatively speaking. Of course, they could be bragging, but it is clear they have fish, they hunt, they have lots of food, they have space. There are chickens everyhwere, and goats. A goat starts bleeting urgently behind me. It seems paralyzed or something, calling to her friends. It keels over and dies. One less goat. We figure this village is better off than the others because they are on the river, they can sell food, charcoal at markets, even kinshasa if they wish. I ask them if they have any questions for us. One latecomer comes to the meeting and raises his hand and asks what the heck we are doing here. Everyone hisses at him, you are always late! Go away! He then starts to say his big problem is that they don’t have enough guns to hunt the animals they want. They want us to give them guns. Uh, sorry my friend. Eat more fish!  We ask them how much fuelwood they use and they say, one basket worth. How big is a basket? And one of the mamans proudly models her really nice backpack basket. I totally want one.

We ask them to take us to a place where they have cut down and burned the forest and planted manioc and corn. They are thrilled. The whole village comes with us on a walk. Sadly, my photograhper is nowhere to be seen. He likes to wander off and talk to people and comes back with lovely portraits of kids and mamans, which are very nice for a gallery exhibit but we have very little use for. We want to show the people, in their surroundings, how they are using nature, how they are cooking, it’s not really enough to see just their face. I ask a kid to run and go find him.

As we take the path into the forest, through recently torched savanna we cross all these young women, carrying palm fronds on their heads, piles of wood, everything, it’s the picture we’ve been looking for – the people using the forest in various ways, edouard where are you? We finally arrive to the site. Carnage. Huge burned trees, still lying there and in between little corn plants, manioc. They are very proud. This is so hugely wasteful. I am talking with the germans, it would be so simple to reduce the burning, and allow them to stay on their land longer and they wouldn’t have to keep cutitng down forest. But this is exactly what we are looking for. A problem with a relatively (?) simple solution…though changing people’s traditions is not simple. But at least we know what needs to be done. Edouard is still not there so i am taking pictures with someone’s crappy digital camera. Grrrrr.

So this is it. I thank our villagers profusely, and translating for joachim, i am standing on a burned tree trunk, make a litlte speech on how we want to thank them, and hopefully work with them in the future. Edouard finally arrives and photographs me and i look like i’m a preacher or something…not what we were going for. I look over and joachim is smoking, contently….along with 8 other villagers, surrounded by clouds of smoke, huge smiles on their faces. „my personal supply“ joachim says and yes, i guess it’s better than giving them money, which is what they usually ask for.

 

 

 

We walk back and the gun guy asks me again for guns. I am trying to explain to him, in simplest terms that if he kills all the animals, and since there is less forest every year there won‘t  be any more animals to kill! His children, grandchildren may never even see what a buffalo looks like! He laughs, there are plenty of animals (i have yet to see anything but one type of bird this whole trip). So he asks me for mosquito nets for fishing. Yeah, i bet he wants the one impregnated with insecticide too, they are particularly effective at catching and killing everything.. his friends all crowd around as i try to explain that every time he eats a baby fish, he is essentially eating 100 future large fish – isn’t better to just eat large fish, and let the small fish become big? He laughs like i am totally crazy. Go back to europe you mondele, you don’t know what your talking about! I try to tell him how it was in mozambique, people starving, no fish left because they catch everything…mozambique is millions of kilometers away, DRC is huge! Vast! God gives them everything they need in huge abundance! Look madame, we give you one of our chickens! And one of the chief’s son’s hands me a chicken. I don’t know what to do with it, i’m petting it, showing it to the formerly vegetarian journalist. We toss it in the back and drive off. It freaks out a few times cluckclucking and flapping around the truck. The cook meets us at the car, and then cooks it. This is only night we will not eat just beef my friends!

 

attack of the village kids

One of the goals of our travels here is to try and understand why people are cutting down these gallery forests. There seems to be little forest left in this mostly savanna landscape, but deforestation is also relatively low – there are small patches of forest remaining, cool, shady areas that are a welcome respite from the heat, with cool tannin waters….but they are constantly being burned and chopped down and converted to agriculture in little pieces. or worse, burned just into order to flush out the animals to hunt, until there will be no more left. Then what will they do?

So we want to talk to villagers and see how they feed themselves, what their needs are, how much income they earn from deforesting, in order to determine what would entice them to stop.

So we go to villages. The only problem ist hat when you roll into a village with a landcruiser with 2 white dudes sitting on the roof (they can’t stand being stuffed together in the back and have preferred to be nearly decapitated by branches), it’s hard to go unnoticed. Every human being under 12 years old screams mondele! And come running in packs and mob us when we climb out. I find these kids to be a bit more agressive than the typical village kid i am used to, they grab my hair and twist my skin, indian burns on my arms and even scratch me.

We stopped in a rather large village of ndjonkele, along the fimi river. 6000 people in these parts. Heaps of kids. I am chasing them, scaring them, throwing the frisbee. You can’t cause this type of disruption for long tho, after a while you need to go see the chief. So we send a messenger and we have an appointment. Plastic chairs and a bench are set up in front of some homemade loungers. Out comes the chief, dressed in bright red, i recall from a trip near here in 2007. The chief sits and looks none too happy. We are surrounded by hundreds of people in a curious semi-circle. We are asked to introduce ourselves and explain what we are doing here, through our lingala translator, flory. Despite the kids jostling to look at us and their parents slapping their heads away, it is completely quiet. We go around our circle, and the chief doesn’t even explain himself he jumps right into his questions. Why are you here. In this situation it is rather difficult to start inquiring about the data we are interested in, so we just need to discuss some background on the project. I start explaining the carbon map, the plane, in the most basic way and immediately all these hands go up. Lots of questions. The chief’s deputy, an angry looking young man with lots of arm muscles requests permission to question me direcly. the inquisition begins. First, he wants to know why his village, ndjonkele is never on the map of drc. There is kinshasa, there are territories, districts, but there is never ndjonkele. I promise that his village will be on my map. In fact, i will make him a map that shows his village, and only his village on a map of Congo. I will bring this to him when i fly out of their airstrip on Monday.

Anyway, they start saying that the forest belongs to them and they can do what they want with it, which is agriculture.  They are not wrong in this respect, but it’s all a little…tense. The chief is staring at me, intently, angrily. Kids are creeping up behind me and pulling on my curls, reaching for my elbows. Everyone else in the group is sitting there, smiling. I need to answer, kindly politically. The more i talk, the more i realize, how on earth do you get 6000 people organized to stop cutting down the forest. When there is nothing left, the soil will be depleted, there will be no more animals to hunt, and that’s it. Finally, they’ve had enough and we decide to adjourn. We get up and take a group photo.

 

 

The angry chief stands in the middle. At one point, edouard asks to take just a photo of the chief. He moves in close, the chief does not budge. At this point, everyone, everyone is completely silent. Edouard snaps some photos, you can hear the shutter click echoing throughout the huts. No one is moving. Edouard slowly turns the camera around so the chief can approve. He stares, emotionless at the small LCD screen which is reflected in his eyes. Total silence, which seemed to last an eternity.

 
Slowly, the chiefs face morphs into the largest smile we have ever seen, teeth and all. and everyone cheers at the same time.

 

Chaos. Kids jumping everywhere, photos! Photos! A hundred kids jump on my shoulders and pull on my earrings. A hundred mini zombies devouring me, i’m down on my knees, overcome. The deputy guy comes and pullst hem off me, and asks me for money. Oddly, he says this in english. „money“ my pockets are empty. Emmanuel, the driver, honks the horn and i make my move towards the land cruiser. Kids reach into grab my neck through the window! Step on it! 

weekend travels to bandundu

So i’m sitting here in the breezy second home of the president of Sogenac, a beligan family-owned industrial cattle farm in the middle of what will be the new Mai Ndombe province – the epicenter of REDD projects in DRC. We had a meeting with Sogenac just yesterday to discuss possible emissions reductions projects and the kind president invited us to his headquarters. in his rented missionary plane. Don’t mind if we do! we needed a vehicle though, and for this reason we flew to Nioki, to pick up a WWF land cruiser and driver. We were also asked to bring all our own food and water. Our travel group had grown to an almost unwieldy size of 10, including our driver, logistician, 3 german consultants, my 2 press guys, WWF staff, of which myself and mina were the only girls.

We arrive to nioki airfield, a dusty piece of dirt amidst random huts and houses. We were significantly delayed at the migration (note that it’s not called immigration) office (oh, my old friends, the DGM!) who sat in their hut with our passport literally spent 57 minutes copying our the numbers into old notebooks. The bathrooms consisted of 3.5 pieces of zinc leaning shabbily together – but padlocked? So I peed behind a termite hill, upon which our truck was awkwardly parked on a slant. I realize later it’s because the battery is dead and it doesn’t start on its own, it needs a push. Which is tons of fun when you’re in a middle of a village with every kid for miles screaming mondele! Mondele! 

Anyway, it’s time to shop for food. My logistics guy doesn’t really seem to comprehend the conundrum of buying overpriced food for 10 people for 3 days in a place where they have never seen 100$ bills. He buys a few bottles of water, some crackers and is all, let’s go! Um, no. I’m in this weird store that could have been something on H street in DC, where you order fried chicken from the asians behind the bullet proof glass? Well here i am sticking my bills into the holes of a chainlink fence with indians on the other side. You point to things on the wall, or the faded, dusty packages in display cases. I am doing calculations, sweating profusely while all these people are staring at me, and the town drunk starts doing an amusing dance and attracts a crowd. The only bottles of potable water are little 300ml things and according to my calculation we need like, 200 of them. Moving on tot he next place…i finally find a place with 1.5L bottles but the price is outrageous so i send my congolese guy in to order for me, and a boy to carry everything on his head back to the car.

On this main street is mostly flip flops, matches, plastic items like buckets and salt for sale, it’s behind this where all the real fresh action is. we head through a dank dingy walkway to the meat and vegetable market. Here i am greeted with cheers and shouts – come buy my crocodile! Whaaaaa? This woman proudly shows me her croc head, chopped up boa, antilope, you name it.

croc for sale

She doesn’t mind my photographer, who has to constantly swat flies from his lens. This one woman keeps pointing to a baby and saying mondele! Mondele! And hands me the baby. So now i am bargaining for rice, with this adorable baby in my arms. We wander around some more for onions, spices, peppes and manioc. The boy is back and piling all the things onto his head.

We get back tot he vehicle, where the driver is replaced the oil filters and other things with some supplies we brought from Kinshasa.  we start tossing everything on the roof of the truck like a train in india. And we’re off on our 6 hour drive. the women get to ride up front while 8 guys are unhappily crammed in the back. They complain the ENTIRE time. I remind them that the gear shift is between my legs and everytime we shift it’s rather uncomfortable but no. They say it’s too bumpy, too hot, too this too that. The press guys are not ready for this. We are in congo! you can’t get anywhere without at least 6 hours of mind-numbing spine crunching 4x4 ing!

me and my peeps

normally, when you take a picture like this the organizers stand in the middle, flanked by the most important ministers...in this case, all my german colleagues vanished to go take a smoke, and as i stood next to head of the department of sustainable development, our major partner in the project, the pesky civil aviation guys (who have assured me repeatedly that my permits will be approved quickly and easily - i'll be checking in on ) edged themselves in for the photo. anyway, does this look like a miss congo pageant...?

i am NOT sorry

so this week has been mostly around the official launch of our project. to officially launch a project you need to have a workshop where you invite all the important people, especially some ministers to make comments and get paid perdiems, then you give people free lunch and a chance for them to complain at length about the project. and this is what we did. and we even gave out free t-shirts. people go nuts over t-shirts. there was actually a small mob scene and i told my assistant several times to order xxxl. sigh. though of course, this being a workshop, the same photographer guy shows up and takes pictures 2 inches from your face, with a flash and then goes and prints them and then displays them and sells them for outrageous prices. people love the photos too. the thing to do is buy the photo of someone and then give it to them. though people always buy up the photos of me (cuz of my awesome congolese threads, for sure) and then when i go their office it's like, oh that's me! this photographer never really catches the best moment tho, you always have your eyes half open, or you're picking your ear with your pen. so you get these low quality prints that look something like this:

thrilled to be here!

anyway, at one point i see the photographer quickly packing up and running off and even though i have my fancy press team with professional photos, everyone loves bad photoguy. so i ask my project manager, mina, this wonderfully organized and productive korean woman we hired to run our project in kinshasa. and she is all outraged, he was taking photos and selling them! really expensive!
yes, mina, i know, but this is what they do, it's a congolese thing, people love the pictures.
oh.
so i manage to call the photographer back before he is hastily, angrily deleting all the photos and even better, i negotiate to have everything put on a cd and delivered to the office for 10 bucks.
mina comes to me later "so i called the photographer and asked him to let me copy his memory stick for 100$." oh mina, you have not been in kinshasa long enough... 
the funniest though, was a few days before the workshop mina sent around the updated agenda and participants list to all the 120 or so people we invited. well somewhere in there, we had a very important guy listed in the speakers list, but not in the list of participants and so he replied-all (everyone replies all, especially the people who reply-all "your message has been received, thank you") complaining that he was forgotten, and his organization is so important and blah blah blah. so my project manager, who does not have the most fluent french, but does ok sends around a response, but jumbles the words and write "sincerement, je m'excuse pas de vous avoir mis dans la liste" essentially saying "i would like to sincerely say, that i am NOT sorry." this goes to everyone, EVERYONE! even the secretary general of the ministry of environment. so then it's 100 rounds of message received, messaged received, message received until someone is all "wait, i think she meant to say she WAS sorry" message received message received message received and there are hundreds of messages, and whenever you get something that is more than 5KB your email is essentially jammed for the entire day. gah. so finally i send a SINCERE apology and tell them they won't be sorry to have attended our workshop heheh! and we have all been giving her a hard time and laughing about it, because i'm sure more embarassing things have happened.
but ending on a touching note, i since received several, simple, reply-to's! just to me! is it even possible? from someone like a cabinet minister telling me things like, we are all working here together in congo towards the same goal, and we are connected in our hearts and understand eachother, we do not need words to express that. nawwwww.   

omba vs. papi

so i think i've told you about omba, he is our go-to man for flight permits and stuff. he is very calm, sounds like barry white, drives a prado and has a bluetooth thing in his ear. the way he drives (like 10km/hr and never uses his horn) is sortof like the way he negotiates. very passive. he needs a little papi in him, don't back down!
so low and behold our plane is finally in range. we're launching our project at a big workshop with all the ministers, i'm shaking hands, posing for photos in my awesome congolese outfit to which everyone says with a kind of sleezy tone "you need a congolese man to go with that."  
omba's man at the airport says a cessna has just landed at n'dolo.
but i can't go, i need to stay here! so i send my photographer edouard who is only really here to get footage and photos of the plane (not sapeurs and wrestlers, those are side projects). so i send edouard to go without me. we do a quick check of what he needs, copy of passport, spare batteries, photo/video permit...and bribe money. as they get into the prado i call out "receipts for everything!"
6 hours later, i see a visibly distraught omba, the sweaty pilot and engineer in their blue overalls with south african flags on it, edouard was dropped off at home. the plane was supposed to be back in Brazzaville tonight, why is the pilot here, what happened?
ohhhh juste des petit soucis...
so, as it turns out, upon arrival at the airport, they paid their respects to the airport chief, or whatever it is called, who scrutinized the photo/video permit, which i should add was officially solicited months earlier from the DRC government to the tune of 400$. "apparently" we failed to "activate" said permit, kindof like i didn't activate wi-fi on my phone and ran up my roaming bill? this comes at a cost..200$. 
i ask Omba, why 200$? 
"well it is 160$ but they did not have change." 
This is where i shake my head, papi would have never let this happen. 
but at least you have a receipt? 
yes.
the receipt is for 160$. 
someone is eating that 40$ and it's not me.
anyway, the airport chief guy then waved towards the runway, giving his green light. a cessna sits near a hangar
edouard and his much lighter wallet go enthusiastically onto the runway and started taking pictures - not of the plane just yet, just the scenery, when he was immediately siezed by police, miliary. because that cessna is not our cessna, that is the president's cessna! your cessna has not landed yet, it is up there in the sky!
but edouard shows the photos, he was first taking the runway, the scene, he happens to have a piece of the propellor of the president's plane.
that's too much. drats. 
edouard deletes the photos. it's not enough. 
the airport chief arrives, in a huff, and says, this is your problem you will have to pay a fee.
100$....80$....ok 50$ , smallest bill he has and they have no small change - did papi teach you nothing??
this time no receipt.  


there she is!

 

i'm a pretty good kinshasa tour guide

when the conservation thing doesn't work out, i am going to start a tour guide business in kinshasa (if  just only i had darker skin....).
so for this trip i am brought some help down to kinshasa to do some press for our project (stay tuned for killer photos and video, and maybe even a guest blogger). and though my donor is accusing me of nepotism, i selected some good friends for this task. i don't care what the donor rules are, i am not going into potentially hairy situations with people i don't know or trust, and i am not a babysitter. besides, my friends will do this for half the price, and they'll let me put them in said hairy situaitons and probably smile about it. AND, everyone loves them and wants to invite them back.
so eric and edouard arrived a few days after me (and broke every airport rule i gave them), and i set them up with 2 cheap bedrooms in some apartment i found. it turns out to be a UN flophouse/frathouse on the 26th floor penthouse of the building with the giant samsung billboard on it. the view is insane. the elevator is crazier. you go up with blue helmet UN guys, or ladies with big bowls on their heads full of fruit, selling door to door. some of the floors are totally run down and abandoned. the elevator doesn't go all the way up so the last few floors you have to hoof it but then, you feel this breeze: from brazzaville to the airport, from gombe to kitambo, the entire upper layer of kinshasa is yours and yours alone. it's a total man-house with cable tv and cold beer kinda thing and my guys couldn't be happier. but what's better? papi the taximan lives downstairs! it's probably one of the most absolute shadiest corners of town but papi can drive right into the garage: perfect! 

view from above

the first week has been the accustomization phase, where i bring eric and edouard simoultaneously to the most fanciest, and the most crappiest places in kin. so they get their bearings. i think it's working. we had 40$ scrimps one night, followed by eating goat bits in the dark with toothpicks, sitting in broken plastic chairs the next. where are the bathrooms? uhhhhhh everywhere (i don't drink liquids so i don't have to go) eric, who is an exact replica of disco stu asks "is this my introduction to bushmeat?" 
ever since he has been rather pale and complaining of stomach cramps. he falls asleep a lot too. we met the head of the parks department, he says to a wincing eric, on whom you can see the waves of stomach pains rippling in his smile "first order of business, is never come to my office in flip flops." and so we left and went to look for a pharmacy. 

on friday night i brought them to the hottest new club in town: the kwilu bar. every other place is now empty, pretty much every UN car in the fleet is parked outside kwilu. this is the place to be. you can actually sit outside on couches and listen to music that goes beyond crappy congolese disco - you can hear the macarena and jay z hip hop too. all my colleagues were calling me "where should we go tonight carbon girl?" and so here we all were. sadly, we shared a table with some gentlemen from an oil company who were all jazzed about digging for oil in virungas national park - that was not a fun discussion, and around 1 am and too many cocktails later (kwilu is awful congolese rhum) my eyelids were getting droopy and i was thinking about my bed. edouard says, look, there's papi! great, my taxi is here, time to go. i bid my farewells and go over to papi when i realize, oh, he is not here to take me home he is here to party! so, party with the taxi driver, let's do shots and then you can drive me home. this is kinshasa! 

fabrics, fabrics

so as of yet, i have not found a single, relaxed, normal way to buy african fabrics. ok, unless i want to go to vlisco where they are 80$ each but that doesn't count.

the whole reason i am in congo is to fly with this little plane we are bringing in from south africa, but it has nothing but problems like crashing in malawi or needing a new o-ring in namibia so, i'm basically waiting for it to show up. which means i have some down time to visit the fabric store.

i asked and asked and asked around for the mother of all fabric stores and was told avenue du commerce, which is really long, and really insane.

so i call papi and ask him if we can just swing by to buy fabrics before lunchtime.

i can already tell that papi is not too jazzed about the idea but as usual he's very accommodating, no problem no problem. we get to the market neighborhood and slowly creep through streets just filled to the gills with buses, people, animals, potholes, dirt, everything. this is it.

i see the store and right in front there are, as usual, all these guys helping you to park, eager to get their commission. so we pick a spot and the guy is like, here here here and he just tosses aside some poor lady's mango stand and waves us in to his special parking spot. 

we get out and i'm in this crazy fabric store, with the loudest music (as usual, so loud you can barely even hear or understand it because it is blowing the speakers) and this guy with a microphone is screaming "super quality! best price!" and some stuff in lingala. it's chaos. there's a bargain corner, with all the fabric pieces on the floor and all the mamans are fighting over the bits and one of the store employees is up on a box, his head and body all wrapped up in fabric and dancing very suggestively. 

the employees are helpful, even though they have this sortof half shut eyelid please kill me now attitude. it's extremely hot. 

i find what i want and papi comes running in, aurelgrooves! aurelgrooves! i need some small bills! the police! and i see his car has a recently installed (man they are quick!) boot (they have boots here?) on the front wheel. this is not good. there are three angry police officers with weapons sitting on the hood. this is so not good. but papi, he is laughing, oh it's just a little negotiation, but it is implied that i must stay in the store - the police cannot, under any circumstances see me or the whole game changes. 10x the bribe, or they might even arrest me - they always find a reason. also, i can't just walk away, this is not at all a safe place to be wandering.  

so i just hang out in the store. the owners are all, what are you doing here? leave! and i say! i can't! so i just start dancing with the employees up on the box with my bag of fabric until papi has finished his business some 20 minuntes later. then, he peels out onto the sidewalk, let's go! go go go! and i hug all my new friends goodbye and jump into the front seat, just as the policemen are slowly counting their loot (papi is so smart, small bills are always best for bribes) and they realize they could have gotten much more than 10$ from this mondele, but we are too quick! thanks for the parking, seeya suckers! and wait until you see my new dresses...

end of the month in kinshasa

so this was the first time i have been to the airport to pick someone up. being on the other side. so thankfully, i was with papi, who suped up his mercedes or something because he drives crazy fast and it only took us 20 minutes to get to the airport. ask anyone, they will tell you it takes an hour.

papi has a military police buddy or something because he makes a call when we're close and then they just wave us in, as opposed to price gouge us for parking (the hourly rate is whatever you can negotiate, sometimes the passenger and the driver negotiate different prices with different dudes and then you have problems..). once in the parking lot we huddle and figure out our strategy. we need to find the best guy we can bribe to get in, or close to the door. papi's buddy only runs the entrance, he has no authority over the little waiting zone. we have a number of suitable candidates eager to do their duty. papi wants to pick the guy with the highest rank, but i can barely see their little badge stripes, i think the guy with the biggest gun is the way to go. we agree on the most angrily tilted beret guy and start walking. 

it's like a kung fu movie where different waves of people come at you and you need to fend them off with smiles, bribes, illogical debate. like the one guy who said "you can't cross this (invisible) line" without paying 2,000 francs per person.

me: why?

"because if we let everyone close to the airport who wanted to be close to the airport, there would be disorder."

me: what if i pay you, and THEN go cause disorder, because i am so outraged at this bribe?

he looks like he's doing a calculation in his head.

our beret dude is only so-so at helping, he basically steps in when he occasionally remembers that he'll get paid the most when we finally get to the door.

we get to the door, i pay him...but then he goes away! which makes our whole effort moot!

the next guy comes along to ask me for a "coffee" and as i pull out bill after bill i'm saying, "guy, this is the most expensive coffee ever! i am not a bank machine!"

my favorite is when you give them money, and they refuse to accept it because my 5$ is a pitiful amount. that's when i say ok, your problem and put my money away and they get suuuuuper mad.
step on it papi! and we peeled out into the street leaving a trail of beggars, and i don't think i'm welcome there anymore but i don't care. oh, unless the plane i am bringing in from south africa has to land here. woops.

which reminds me - never come to kinshasa at the end of the month! i have a line of people at my office door asking me for money...but i am broke i tell them!
white people are never poor.
don't go there buddy...

there are no gifts, sigh

i'm not even 5 minutes here and everyone, even the guys who play checkers and open the gates at the office are asking me what i brought them, what i brought them. i'm not santa claus, people. it's bad enough i had one 20kg checked bag filled solely with pruning shears and test tubes for our field office. 
on the other hand, i have quickly found out that if a merchant gives you a gift after buying something, in the guise of you being a valued customer who will surely return - well it's only because they just ripped you off and feel kinda bad about it.
i bought avocados from the lady with the big bowl of avocados on her head. she bats your hand away if you touch them (the people at my market in berlin do that too) and asks you when you plan on eating it, now, later, tomorrow and selects one appropriately. i was tired from haggling with my taxi driver, so only half-assed bargained (i tend to go off coffee on these trips and stick to tea) so was also kinda hazy. when she was giving me my bag she takes my hand and says "gift for you my dear" and gives me a avocado so ripe it's almost melting in my hands. (it was delicious, btw).
i wasn't so easy on the taxi driver, because most of these guys are assholes. i mean, they just dreeeeam of picking up a white girl to charge 100 times (literally) more than a congolese. as i paid him the outrageous fare he has the nerve to say ok, that's great, i threw in the security for free. security? what security? you put your driver seat all the way back and slept while i shopped in a store whose parking lot is guarded by UN soldiers!! grrrrr. 

you'd think they...

so when you leave kinshasa, you have to pay this 50$ fee at the airport, called the go-pass. it's mandatory. so, as i was sitting there today on the runway in front of my plane, indian style on the warm asphalt, leaning against my backpack, only 50m away from this decrepit building with its flickering lights, i started to think. if there are let's say, on average 6 planes leaving a day, and each of them has, ok 200 people in it? on average? then that's at least 60,000 USD a day revenue. For an airport with basically one gate, ok, wait, no gates, just a building, really, that's kindof a lot, dontcha think? enough to buy toilet paper? or more than 4 plastic chairs at the bar? how about one, maybe two of those buses, like they have in other cities that transport you from the plane to the terminal? that would be great. because even though our plane is practically touching the airport terminal you need to be transported allllll the way around the back of it and basicallly in a figure 8 to end up right where you started, but closer to the door.  besides the one actual airport bus which is parked on cinder blocks over there, they have limited transport options. there is one small school bus, which is a total death trap, you can either fall through the gaping hole in the floor, or out of any of the doors that open whenever it careens. because it careens. it's like a last lap nascar dash and there is nothing to hold on to but some congolese lady's hair extensions when that thing gets going. 
so now they have evolved a series of mini-vans, like from off the street or something. sooo you walk down from the plane and there's a line of minivans waiting for you. and yes it's just like in the street, you push your way into one until they are filled to 5 times the standard capacity, though here, people are all fancy and they go and put their luggage in the trunk, like we're going on a road trip? and so i'm just letting you picture what this whole scene looks like for the 250-or so people who have just exited this plane and how many minivan trips this requires. and once inside the van people are all, wow, (whistling and tongue clicking) this is pretty nice, what an improvement! a mercedes! as they tenderly rub the upholstery. let it just be said that congolese will always let needless luxury blind mindless inefficiency.

once i exited the airport there was a giant party, flags, singing, madness, uggggghhhh. the president's wife was on the plane and they were welcoming her. that's really great and all but having to barge through 200 people to get to your car, and then having to wait in that car for another hour before making it to the exit just wasn't my idea of funtime. 

finally on the road (there's a new paved road which is made by the japanese, which is 100 times better than the chinese road, btw) we were in the usual stop and go traffic. in front, a huge 18 wheeler, which about half of its wheels missing, and a bunch of dudes sitting on top of piles of stuff. every time the traffic slowed to a stop, a guy would jump out and put a small log behind the wheel to keep the truck from moving backwards. i don't need to tell you that the log was quite round and large couldn't logically by my geometry prevent any dangerous incidents. when the truck would start moving the guy would toss up the log to his friends and run and jump on. as this happened over and over again i ask my driver if he wouldn't mind changing lanes, and he's like, what are you so worried about? that's not the only log you know, they put one under every row of tires, and even in front, duh.